


with a whimper

by wekeepeachotherhuman



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: @ russos: let me write your next movie i'll make sure everyone is happy, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, No major character death tag in case people didn't want to be spoiled that way, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), So major major spoilers here!!!, but lo and behold there is MAJOR character death here, but right now this was all i could muster, maybe eventually i'll do a full-on fix it fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 04:43:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14489076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wekeepeachotherhuman/pseuds/wekeepeachotherhuman
Summary: Tony returns from Titan alone to a world half-empty. He finds what's left of Earth's Mightiest Heroes in Wakanda.





	with a whimper

For all intents and purposes, Tony is alone on Titan. 

Nebula keeps her distance. Offers explanations only when Tony, talking for the sake of talking -- talking to fill the heavy silence and emptiness where Peter had been-- asks her a question. She knows Thanos. She knows what this all means. But Tony doesn’t really  _ care _ . He needs a plan. He knows that. And in this universe, Nebula is probably one of the best people to help him come up with one. 

But he doesn’t want to strategize. He wants to sit right here, waiting for  _ all that dust _ to settle. He wants to sit here and not think about what it might mean if he goes back to Stark Tower and Pepper isn’t there waiting for him. He wants to sit here and not think about having to accept that the last thing he had said to Steve in Siberia might be the last thing that Steve will ever hear from him. 

He  _ wants _ that. But he knows that if there is one thing in the world that is still true, it’s that Tony Stark --  _ Iron Man _ \-- puts aside what he wants and tries to do what’s right. 

And what’s right is going back to the jarring silence that will be a half-empty New York City, and finding whatever is left of Earth’s mightiest heroes and  _ make things right _ . 

 

\--

 

Tony lands at Stark Tower hours later. 

What he’d thought would be a suffocating quietness in New York is chaos. What’s left of the city makes enough noise that Tony can’t even think straight. Sirens are still blaring. People are screaming. In shock and confused. Looking for whoever might be left. 

_ They have no idea _ . They have no idea  _ why _ they’ve just won the world’s worst coin toss. And they’ll want answers. Answers that Tony has but isn’t willing to give just yet. 

So he doesn’t help. He doesn’t go down onto the city streets and try to pick up the broken pieces of their new world order. He goes to the tower and he looks for Pepper. 

The tower is empty. Whoever was still left breathing had left, probably looking for family and friends. 

He goes to his own bedroom. It’s a mess. There are clothes strewn across the bed. Pepper’s clothes. And Tony feels his chest swell. There’s hope in this mess. Hope in the fact that Pepper had been spared. She’d packed her things and left. Hell, maybe she was out looking for him  _ right now _ . 

Tony turns, knows exactly where the surveillance camera is in the corner of the bedroom. He holds still long enough for the tech to recognise him. And Tony knows, if Pepper is alive, she’ll have programmed an alert here to tell her when, or if, Tony came back. 

And quicker than Tony had even thought possible, the television turns on automatically. And she’s there. Calling from a room that Tony doesn’t recognise, but  _ she’s there _ . And she’s crying. 

“Tony?” she asks. Gently, unsure of allowing herself to feel the relief of him being alive until she knows it for sure. 

Tony steps towards the television, finds himself reaching out to touch it even though he knows she won’t feel him. 

“Pepper,” he says, and she sobs. Just once. Allows herself one small moment to really  _ listen _ to Tony saying her name. She etches the sound of it into her memory and holds onto it for dear life. 

“Tony, you’re alive,” she says. 

“Yeah,” he says back. He can’t quite believe it yet either. 

She holds her head in her hands and takes a few heaving breaths. She shakes her head, then she looks back up at him. She looks exhausted, and hopeful that Tony might be able to help ease that. 

“What happened?” she asks. Tony opens his mouth to answer, but doesn’t know what to say. “We lost…  _ everyone _ . They just… Tony, where are they?”

Tony shakes his head and thinks of Peter. He thinks of him saying over and over,  _ I don’t want to go. _ And he wonders that same thing.  _ Where are they? _ Where are they and how can we get them back?

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I’m going to find them.”

“Tony, what if…” She trails off. Looks away from Tony as if that might make that question easier, then she looks back. “We need help.”

Tony nods, looks down at his feet. He thinks of Bruce and Steve, and Nat and Thor. How many of them would even be left to give them the help that they need. He looks back to Pepper. Resolves himself in her loss and fear, and says: “There has to be someone.”

 

\--

 

There’s a blinking message in the lab when Tony finally goes. It’s from Banner. Tony opens it. It’s from two hours ago. And Tony can’t help the bubbling laugh of relief in his throat. He runs his hands through his hair. With shaking hands, he lets Bruce’s message play. 

Bruce’s face pops up on the screen. War-torn, but clear as day. Tony clenches his jaw, cover his mouth with his hands and waits for Bruce to speak. 

“Tony?” Bruce hangs his chin towards his chest. As though the sadness of Tony possibly never answering this message suddenly hits him. “Tony, if you’re still out there. We need you.” 

“Yeah, I’m here, Big Guy,” Tony hears himself say back. 

Bruce doesn’t know what else to say. Tony can see that on his face. The shock and loss is still waving over him with every breath. 

“Is that Tony?” he hears someone say off-screen. Bruce turns towards the voice, but Tony already knows who it belongs to: Rhodey.

Bruce shakes his head solemnly then points towards the camera. “It’s a message. I can’t get through to him.”

Then Rhodey is in frame, standing over Bruce’s shoulder, leaning towards the camera. 

“Tony?” Rhodes says. “Your ass better not be dust.”

Tony laughs, knows he’s crying and he’s alone enough not to give a shit about it. He shakes his head. Then the thought suddenly strikes him:  _ fuck this _ . He digs into his pocket for his phone. There’s only one thing better than watching this recording and that’d be hearing his friend’s voice. 

Tony stands as the phone begins to ring. He paces and waits. 

On the third ring, Rhodey picks up. 

“Tony?” he asks. “Tony, that better be you, you son of a bitch.”

“It’s me,” Tony says back. Tony hears Rhodey breathe a sigh of relief. 

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

“You too.”

And then the question looms. Neither want to ask. 

“Is Pepper…” Rhodey starts. 

“She’s alive,” Tony finishes for him. “Who…” And there’s no easy way to ask this, so Tony just dives into his head-first. “Who’s left?”

“Bruce,” Rhodey offers. “Nat and Thor, too.”

“What about Cap?” Tony asks. He asks it quickly, like tearing off a band-aid. He can’t tip-toe around this anymore. He needs this answer now. He  _ needs _ to know that Steve is alright. That they can come back from this the way they always do: together. 

“He’s here,” Rhodey says. But it doesn’t sound like he’s entirely convinced. And there’s only one thing that could make Steve Rogers  _ here, but not here _ . 

So Tony asks: “Barnes?”

There’s a long enough pause on the other line that Tony knows the answer before Rhodey even tells him: “Barnes didn’t make it. No Sam either.”

“Damn it,” Tony mutters. 

He suddenly wonders what grief must feel like to a super-soldier. He remembers all of his father’s lessons on the serum that he and Dr. Erskine had developed and administered. How the serum made good things great and bad things worse. And Tony thinks, what can be worse than a hole in your heart?

“You should be here, Tony,” Rhodey says quietly. 

Tony nods to himself. He closes his eyes and sees Steve behind his eyelids. Lost and devastated. A shell of something that Tony might not even recognise. 

“Where’s ‘here’, exactly?”

“Wakanda,” Rhodey answers. 

Tony takes a deep breath before he opens his eyes. “I’m on my way.”

 

\--

 

The palace in Wakanda is still beautiful, even though it’s missing half of what made it so. 

But Steve isn’t in the palace. Or at least, that’s what Tony has been told. 

Bruce stands across the lab table from Tony, his hands on the table top. He’s watching Tony carefully, imploringly. They’d expected Tony to arrive with answers. But he didn’t have any more than they did. 

Since Thanos wiped out half of the universe, Bruce had spent all of his time here, in this lab in the palace. The lab belonged to the Wakandan Princess. Or…  _ Queen, _ now. It was impressively high-tech. It almost made Tony wish that he were in a better mood. He might have actually had a little fun in here. 

“I’m sorry,” Tony finds himself saying. 

“For what?” Bruce asks. 

“I’m not…” Tony gestures vaguely around him. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. He isn’t even sure what he’s apologizing for at this point. It just seems to be the thing to say. It’s what Peter had said before Tony watched him disappear in a cloud of dust. What else do you say at the end of the world? Especially if you’re one of the chosen few to survive it. “I didn’t bring any answers with me.”

Bruce shakes his head. “Nobody knows what to do here, Tony.” Bruce shrugs helplessly. “And we didn’t ask you here because we thought you could magically fix it. We asked you here because, at the very least, when we have you on our side.” Bruce pauses, stands up a little straighter. “We’ll always have a fighting chance.”

And Tony hears Peter again.  _ I don’t want to go. Please, Mr. Stark. _ Some fighting chance he gave Peter then. Some fighting chance he’d give them all now. He shakes his head, laughs ruefully. “Isn’t that what we say about our Star-Spangled Man?”

Bruce is quiet and that makes Tony look back up at him. 

“Cap took a hit,” Bruce says nodding. “But he believes that too. Now that you’re here. Now that we’re together. We have a chance.” 

“If he still wants to fight,” Tony quips, and then immediately hates himself for it. 

And Bruce almost winces at those words. He returns his attention to the computer in front of him and doesn’t say anything in return. 

“You talked to him yet?” Tony asks. 

“No,” Bruce responds. Not…  _ At length _ .” Tony nods. “He wants to fight, Tony. He needs to. Doing nothing right now is not an option.”

“Super soldiers get tired too, you know,” Tony says.

“Not this one,” Bruce says. “Not when Barnes is out there somewhere.”

Tony crosses his arms over his chest. He looks out the lab window, looks out over the melee field, still littered with weapons and bodies. “You think they’re still out there?”

Bruce gives him a small smile. The answer to that is  _ probably not _ , but instead, Bruce says: “I have to. And this lab we’re standing in.  _ Shuri’s _ lab. This is where we’ll find them.”

“The Queen of Wakanda,” Tony says. And even the sound of that title instills a little confidence. 

“She’s incredible, Tony. The smartest person I’ve ever met.  _ Period _ .”

“So we science this hell out of this shitty situation?” Tony says with a smile. 

“Damn right,” Bruce answers. 

 

\--

 

Steve is in a small cottage on the palace grounds. It’s where Bucky had been staying after being taken out of cryo. What’s left of the Dora Milaje escort Tony there. Tony pauses ten feet from the small front door. It’s quiet inside. The only evidence that there might be someone inside is smoke billowing out from a small chimney. Tony feels his hands start to shake. He looks over his shoulder at the women behind him. 

“You think he’ll be happy to see me?” he asks. 

No one says anything so Tony steps forward. He steps towards the door and pushes it open slowly. 

The cottage isn’t much. One room, open space, with a bed pushed up against one of the walls. There’s a small fire burning. Not much more than the searing wood. Kept low by habit from the Second World War. 

Steve is at a window next to a small stove in what’s been turned into a makeshift kitchen. His shoulders hang low. He’s looking out across the palace grounds. His hands are on the window sill. There are a few planted herbs there, catching the sun. 

“Steve?” Tony says softly. 

Steve’s shoulders drop even further. He doesn’t tense the way that Tony had thought he might. Steve’s changed out of whatever he fought in. He’s in a long-sleeved shirt that Tony doesn’t recognise. Something that must have just been here. Something of Bucky’s. 

“You’re alive,” Steve says without turning around. 

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Apparently.”

Tony hears Steve laugh. It’s a short, sad thing that barely sounds like a laugh at all. Steve turns and the look on his face devastates Tony. He isn’t crying, but Tony knows he has been. He looks smaller, leaning in on himself in a way that Tony has never seen. Steve keeps his eyes anywhere but on Tony. He’s lost, without words, and trapped in time. 

“I’m glad you’re here, Tony,” Steve says. His voice suddenly sounds more raw. He nods while he speaks. 

“Me too, Cap,” Tony says. “At the end of days.”

Steve smiles sadly. He plays with the sleeve of his shirt, fraying it more than it already is. 

“And Pepper? Is she…”

“She’s in New York,” Tony tells him. 

Steve nods. “That’s good.”

“We got lucky,” Tony says. He isn’t sure if that’s reassuring or discouraging. And clearly, neither is Steve. Tony steps forward. He holds his hand out, already reaching for Steve. And Steve doesn’t miss it. He looks as though he might break the second Tony touches him. “Steve,” Tony says, softly, as if he spoke too loud, Steve might just bolt. “We’ll find him. We’ll find all of them.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, but he doesn’t really buy it. 

“Barnes came back once, he can do it again.”

“He shouldn’t have to,” Steve says, shaking his head. 

“No,” Tony says. He finally reaches Steve. He touches his forearm. Traces downward towards his hand and pauses there. His fingers tracing along the back of Steve’s palm. “He shouldn’t.”

Steve looks down at their hands. He turns his hand over, interlocking his fingers with Tony’s. 

“The end of days, huh?” Steve asks with a teary smile. 

“I guess that was maybe a little dramatic,” Tony concedes. 

“Well, if you’re right.” Steve steps forward, closing the gap between them further. “At least we’re in good company.”


End file.
